I have two cards with me.... Creative's Soundblaster Live Value and Audigy2 Value. Which of these two would be a better choice for listening to music only (2 channel audio)?

Regards,
Vinu.

Live series has some noisy DACs, all Audigy series cards whup its ass. I am just guessing that the Audigy 2 Value can't have much worse than the rest of the A2 series, but I may be wrong.

The Audigy and newer cards also have the advantage of continued driver maintenance. While some have managed to get the A2 and even A4 drivers working on the Live series, 3D sound and EAX prove to be much buggier in games. Rather than the final Live drivers' bug of volumes sometimes being too loud when sounds start playing, or a stuttering effect, you will often experience sound drop-out or incorrect frequency filtering cutting the sound partially or almost completely. I realize you care more about music than gaming, but think about this as well. (OK, just describing a few issues I've had recently as I swapped in Live 5.1 card because Revo 7.1 drivers were BSODing on installation in Vista beta, and I kind of wanted to try real EAX in GTA:SA. And now I want a A2ZS to go with those UPS units I've been meaning to purchase for those twice a year power outages.)

why why!? How about neither! . When it comes to long run in terms of the lesser of the "two evil's" I would go with the Audigy 2 also

I wouldn't exactly call that evil. The Audigy actually brought a more powerful DSP and nicer DACs, and the Audigy 2 was the first to live up to the 24-bit claims. While Creative has been rather shady in the past, you can't go wrong with the Audigy 2 and newer cards if you want music and gaming. Until both DirectSound3D and EAX die, Creative still holds the upper hand for gaming, and their continuing release cycle.

Meanwhile, my M-Audio Revolution 7.1 still has no new driver updates since April 2004, the software Sensaura sucks and has a very crappy HRTF model, and the drivers BSOD on installation in Vista beta 1. Oh, and still no x64 drivers. Boo. Hiss.

You really have to decide what is more important to you, if you want to go with the hidden third option of buying something else.

Creative Live! 24-bit has absolutely identical DAC (CirrusLogic CS4382-KQ) to Audigy 2 ZS DAC.

That's about the only thing they can do

Thank you for all the replies. I'll stick with the Audigy2 for now, I think.

@kode54 - supported drivers are not too much of a problem for me.... am using the soundcard primarily on Linux, and both are about evenly supported.

(I understand that both SB Live and Audigy2 are nowhere near the quality of say, the Envy24HT chipset, for example, but with two soundcards already lying around at home, can't afford to buy a third one......).

Regards,
Vinu.

I am unfamiliar with that series. I am only assuming he still has one of the original series. Considering the driver glitches I still experience with the last official drivers for emu10k1 cards, I'd say it's time to retire it.



Nice sound quality, poor update cycle. Envy24HT is one of the few exceptions to XP drivers working from Vista, as they consistently BSOD every time I try to install them. Stuck between the two evils of either onboard sound or Live 5.1, I chose 5.1. Noisier, but since I happened to be playing GTA:SA anyway, I wanted real EAX 2 instead of crappy SoundMAX software EAX 2.

Hi, just a notice about the Live! card, I noticed that the midi sound through this card is different from My previews built-in sound card, for example, the grand Piano's notes sound is worse than before, I don't know why!

The programmer

This is starting to get off-topic.

For one, Creative's MIDI synthesizer would have a completely different sound bank. Your onboard hardware is likely just touting Microsoft's own software synthsizer, which uses Roland's crappy 4MB bank.

For "best" results, reconfigure Creative's stuff to use the 8MB bank, using the SoundFont control panel.

For better results all around that won't depend on your sound hardware, acquire and install Yamaha's S-YXG50 software synthesizer, which has a nice all-around sound to it.

Thanks so much 'kode54' for describing, but how could I get to the SoundFont control panel? I couldn't find it anywhere!

second, from where I can download Yamaha's software synthesizer?

thank you again for reading my article

your brother, (Adam is our big father, isn't?! )
The Programmer